Thus much about collecting book-plates. One word may be tolerated about the character of one's own book-plate. To my taste, mere coats-of-arms with mottoes are not the best form. They simply denote ownership. They might well answer some further purpose, as for example to typify the peculiar tastes of the proprietor in respect to his books. A portrait of the owner is not objectionable, indeed is quite welcome in connection with some device or motto pertaining to books and not to mere family descent.
But why, although a collector may have a favorite author, like Hawthorne or Thackeray, for example, should he insert his portrait in his book-plate, as is often done? Mr. Howells would writhe in his grave if he knew that somebody had stuck Thackeray's portrait or Scott's in "Silas Lapham," and those Calvinists who think that the "Scarlet Letter" is wicked, would pronounce damnation on the man who should put the gentle Hawthorne's portrait in a religious book. To be sure, one might have a variety of book-plates, with portraits appropriate to different kinds of books--Napoleon's for military, Calvin for religious, Walton's for angling and a composite portrait of Howells-James for fiction of the photographic school; but this would involve expense and destroy the intrinsic unity desirable in the book-plate. So let the portrait, if any, be either that of the proprietor or a conventional image. If I were to relax and allow a single exception it would be in favor of dear Charles Lamb's portrait in "Fraser's," representing him as reading a book by candle light. (For the moment this idea pleases me so much that I feel half inclined to eat all my foregoing words on this point, and adopt it for myself. At any rate, I hereby preempt the privilege.)
I have referred to Mr. Lang's antipathy to book-plate collectors, and while, as I have observed, he goes to extravagant lengths in condemning their pursuit, still it may be of interest to my readers to know just what he says about them, and so I reproduce below a ballad on the subject, with (the material for) which he kindly supplied me when I solicited his mild expression of opinion on the subject:
THE SNATCHERS.
The Romans snatched the Sabine wives; The crime had some extenuation, For they were leading lonely lives And driven to reckless desperation.
Lord Elgin stripped the Grecian frieze Of all its marbles celebrated, So our art-students now with ease Consult the figures overrated.
Napoleon stole the southern pictures And hung them up to grace the Louvre; And though he could not make them fixtures, They answered as an art-improver.
Bold men ransack an Egyptian tomb, And with the mummies there make free; Such intermeddling with Time's womb May aid in archeology.
So Cruncher dug up graves in haste, To sell the corpses to the doctors; This trade was not against his taste, Though Misses "flopped," and vowed it shocked hers.
The modern snatcher sponges leaves And boards of books to crib their labels; Most petty, trivial of thieves, Surpassing all we read in fables.
He pastes them in a big, blank book To show them to some rival fool, And I pronounce him, when I look, An almost idiotic ghoul.
X.
THE BOOK-AUCTIONEER.
There is one figure that stands in a very unpleasant relation to books.
If anybody has any curiosity to know what I consider the most undesirable occupation of mankind, I will answer candidly--that of an auctioneer of private libraries. It does not seem to have fallen into disrepute like that of the headsman or hangman, and perhaps it is as unpleasantly essential as that of the undertaker. But it generally thrives on the unhappiness of those who are compelled to part with their books, on the rivalries of the rich, and the strifes of the trade. It was urged against Mr. Cleveland, on his first canvass for the Presidency, that when he was sheriff he had hanged a murderer. For my own part, I admired him for performing that solemn office himself rather than hiring an underling to do it. But if he had been a book-auctioneer, I might have been prejudiced against him.
Not so ignoble and inhuman perhaps as that of the slave-seller, still the business must breed a sort of callousness which is abhorrent to the genial Book-Worm. How I hate the glib rattle of his tongue, the mouldiness of his jests and the transparency of his puffery! I should think he would hate himself. It must be worse than acting Hamlet or Humpty Dumpty a hundred consecutive nights. Dante had no punishment for the Book-Worm in hell, if I remember right, but if he deserved any pitiless reprobation, it would be found in compelling him to cry off books to all eternity. Grant that the auctioneer is a person of sensibility and acquainted with good books, then his calling must give him many a pang as he observes the ignorance and carelessness of his audience. It is better and more fitting that he should know little of his wares. He ought to be well paid for his work, and he is--no man gets so much for mere talk except the lawyer, and perhaps not even he. I do not so much complain of his favoritism. When there is something especially desirable going, I frequently fail to catch his eye, and my rival gets the prize. But in this he is no worse than the Speaker. On the other hand he sometimes loads me up with a thing that I do not want, and in possession of which I would be unwilling to be found dead, pretending that I winked at him--a species of imposition which it is impolitic to resent for fear of being entirely ignored. These discretionary favors are regarded as a practical joke and must not be declined. But what I do complain of is his commercial stolidity, surpassing that of Charles Surface when he sold the portraits of his ancestors. The "bete noir" of the book trade is
THE STOLID AUCTIONEER.
Let not a sad ghost From the scribbling host Revisit this workaday sphere; He'll find in the sequel All talents are equal When they come to the auctioneer.
Not a whit cares he What the book may be, Whether missal with glorious show, A folio Shakespeare, Or an Elzevir, Or a Tupper, or E. P. Roe.
Without any qualms He knocks down the Psalms, Or the chaste Imitatio, And takes the same pains To enhance his gains With a ribald Boccaccio.
He rattles them off, Not stopping to cough, He shows no distinction of person; One minute's enough For similar stuff Like Shelley and Ossian Macpherson.
A Paradise Lost Is had for less cost Than a bulky "fifteener" in Greek, And Addison's prose Quite frequently goes For a tenth of a worthless "unique."
This formula stale Of his will avail For an epitaph meet for his rank, When dropping his gavel He falls in the gravel, "Do I hear nothing more?--gone--to--?
I speak feelingly, but I think it is pardonable. I once went through an auction sale of my own books, and while I lost money on volumes on which I had bestowed much thought, labor and expense, I made a profit on Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" in tree-calf. I do not complain of the loss; what I was mortified by was the profit. But the auctioneer was not at all abashed; in fact he seemed rather pleased, and apparently regarded it as a feather in his cap. I have always suspected that the shameless purchaser was Silas Wegg.
XI.
THE BOOKSELLER.
Considering his importance in modern civilization, it is singular that so little has been recorded of the Bookseller in literature. Shakespeare has a great deal to say of books of various kinds, but not a word, I believe, of the Bookseller. It is true that Ursa Major gave a mitigated growl of applause to the booksellers, if I recollect my Boswell right, and he condescended to write a life of Cave, but bookseller in his view meant publisher. It is true that Charles Knight wrote a book entitled "Shadows of the Old Booksellers," but here too the characters were mainly publishers, and his account of them is indeed shadowy. The chief thing that I recall about any of the booksellers thus celebrated is that Tom Davies had "a pretty wife," which is probably the reason why Doctor Johnson thought Tom would better have stuck to the stage. So far as I know, the most vivid pen-pictures of booksellers are those depicting the humble members of the craft, the curb-stone venders. They are much more picturesque than their more affluent brethren who are used to the luxury of a roof.
Rummaging over the contents of an old stall, at a half book, half old iron shop in Ninety-four alley, leading from Wardour street to Soho, yesterday, I lit upon a ragged duodecimo, which has been the strange delight of my infancy; the price demanded was sixpence, which the owner (a little squab duodecimo of a character himself) enforced with the assurance that his own mother should not have it for a farthing less. On my demurring to this extraordinary assertion, the dirty little vender reinforced his assertion with a sort of oath, which seemed more than the occasion demanded. "And now," said he, "I have put my soul to it." Pressed by so solemn an asseveration, I could no longer resist a demand which seemed to set me, however unworthy, upon a level with his nearest relations; and depositing a tester, I bore away the battered prize in triumph.
--Essays of Elia.
Monsieur Uzanne, who has treated of the elegancies of the Fan, the Muff, and the Umbrella, has more recently given the world a quite unique series of studies among the bookstalls and the quays of Paris--"The Book Hunter in Paris"--and this too one finds more entertaining than any account of Quaritch's or Putnam's shop would be.
I must bear witness to the honesty and liberality of booksellers. When one considers the hundreds of catalogues from which he has ordered books at a venture, even from across the ocean, and how seldom he has been misled or disappointed in the result, one cannot subscribe to a belief in the dogma of total depravity. I remember some of my booksellers with positive affection. They were such self-denying men to consent to part with their treasures at any price. And as a rule they are far more careless than ordinary merchants about getting or securing their pay. To be sure it is rather ignoble for the painter of a picture, or the chiseller of a statue, or the vender of a fine book, to affect the acuteness of tradesmen in the matter of compensation. The excellent bookseller takes it for granted, if he stoops to think about it, that if a man orders a Caxton or a Grolier he will pay for it, at his convenience. It was this unthinking liberality which led a New York bookseller to give credit to a distinguished person--afterwards a candidate for the Presidency--to a considerable amount, and to let the account stand until it was outlawed, and his sensibilities were greviously shocked, when being compelled to sue for his due, his debtor pleaded the statute of limitations! His faith was not restored even when the acute buyer left a great sum of money by his will to found a public library, and the legacy failed through informality.
I have only one complaint to make against booksellers. They should teach their clerks to recognize The Book-Worm at a glance. It is very annoying, when I go browsing around a book-shop, to have an attendant come up and ask me, who have bought books for thirty years, if he can "show me anything"--just as if I wanted to see anything in particular--or if "anybody is waiting on me"--when all I desire is to be let alone. Some booksellers, I am convinced, have this art of recognition, for they let me alone, and I make it a rule always to buy something of them, but never when their employees are so annoyingly attentive. I do not object to being watched; it is only the implication that I need any assistance that offends me. It is easy to recognize the Book-Worm at a glance by the care with which he handles the rare books and the indifference with which he passes the standard authors in holiday bindings.
Once I had a bookseller who had a talent for drawing, which he used to exercise occasionally on the exterior of an express package of books. One of these wrappings I have preserved, exhibiting a pen-and-ink drawing of a war-ship firing a big gun at a few small birds. Perhaps this was satirically intended to denote the pains and time he had expended on so small a sale. But I will now immortalize him.
The most striking picture of a bookseller that I recall in all literature is one drawn by M. Uzanne, in the charming book mentioned above, which I will endeavor to transmute and transmit under the title of
THE PROPHETIC BOOK.
"La Croix," said the Emperor, "cease to beguile; These bookstalls must go from my bridges and quays; No longer shall tradesmen my city defile With mouldering hideous scarecrows like these."
While walking that night with the bibliophile, On the Quai Malaquais by the Rue de Saints Peres, The Emperor saw, with satirical smile, Enkindling his stove, in the chill evening air,
With leaves which he tore from a tome by his side, A bookseller ancient, with tremulous hands; And laying aside his imperial pride, "What book are you burning?" the Emperor demands.
For answer Pere Foy handed over the book, And there as the headlines saluted his glance, Napoleon read, with a stupefied look, "Account of the Conquests and Victories of France."
The dreamer imperial swallowed his ire; Pere Foy still remained at his musty old stand, Till France was environed by sword and by fire, And Germans like locusts devoured the land.
Doubtless the occupation of bookseller is generally regarded as a very pleasant as well as a refined one. But there is another side, in the estimation of a true Book-Worm, and it is not agreeable to him to contemplate the life of
THE BOOK-SELLER.
He stands surrounded by rare tomes Which find with him their transient homes, He knows their fragrant covers; He keeps them but a week or two, Surrenders then their charming view To bibliomaniac lovers.
An enviable man, you say, To own such wares if but a day, And handle, see and smell; But all the time his spirit shrinks, As wandering through his shop he thinks He only keeps to sell.
The man who buys from him retains His purchase long as life remains, And then he doesn't mind If his unbookish eager heirs, Administering his affairs, Shall throw them to the wind.